Every few years, someone comes along to claim their new audio format finally strips away everything between musician and ear. Once, it was Neil Young; now, it’s T-Bone Burnett. But in this incisive essay, Mack Hagood teases at why a certain kind of listener is so consumed with the search for “a technology sophisticated enough […]
Peter Rubin
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Nathan Fielder Is Out of His Mind (and Inside Yours)
On the axis of cringe comedy, Nathan Fielder’s work on TV series Nathan For You ranks somewhere between Sasha Baron Cohen and Covering Your Eyes and Ears to Escape the Vicarious Embarrassment. But Lila Shapiro’s profile, coming just ahead of Fielder’s return to television, attempts to peel back the layers of artifice between man and world. […]
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The Confessions of a Conscious Rap Fan
Mychal Denzel Smith’s musical upbringing sounds a lot like mine: copious amounts of hip-hop that was deemed “underground,” “backpack,” or (perhaps most conspicuously brandished) “conscious.” Elitism disguised as authenticity. Yet, with the recent returns of Black Star and Kendrick Lamar, Smith found himself unmoved — and in this crystalline essay, he unpacks exactly why. The […]
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How OXO Conquered the American Kitchen
Whether it’s a salad spinner or a vegetable peeler, chances are your kitchen has at least one product from OXO — a brand that actually engineers and designs its own housewares goods, and has inspired broad devotion because of it. Slate’s Dan Kois visits the company’s New York headquarters for a piece that straddles the […]
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Stephen Curry and the Spirit of History
One one hand, I’ll read any smart piece that dives deep on the transcendent play of the Golden State Warriors’ point guard — and even more so in the wake of Curry finally winning an elusive NBA Finals MVP honor. But on the other hand, I can’t remember any others in which a history scholar […]
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Back to Chagos
In February, a ship set out from Mauritius into the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Its mission? To deliver a group of visitors to the Chagos archipelago, under their own flag, for the first time since the British government had forcibly cleared the islands of their 2,000 inhabitants in 1966. Cullen Murphy was there […]
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Not-So-Magic Kingdom
That Disney’s theme parks exist in stark economic contrast with their surroundings is no mystery. (See: Sean Baker’s 2017 film, The Florida Project.) But in this reported essay, Gaby Del Valle traces a long arc — from Roy and Walt Disney’s initial vision for Orlando, through the flawed development of nearby town Celebration, to newly […]
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“I’m Still Alive but Sh*t Is Getting Wild”: Inside the Siege of the Amarula
In March of 2021, a village in northern Mozambique was attacked by a local ISIS-affiliated group called Al Shabab. Dozens were killed, and 200 people found themselves huddled in a hotel used by imported military contractors and construction workers, trying desperately to arrange rescue as Al Shabab waited outside. Rescue didn’t arrive. What happened next […]
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Why Is ‘Bob’s Burgers’ So Freakishly Lovable? This Guy.
If you, a (presumed) fan of animated comedy, were to draw a line from Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist through Home Movies and on to Bob’s Burgers, that line would as looping and whimsical as the man who evolved along with those shows — from editor to writer to pun-obsessed, freak-flag-flying creator. This is the Loren Bouchard profile you […]
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The Funk of Poverty
The creative community in Columbus, Ohio has already given us poet-essayists like Hanif Abdurraqib and Scott Woods. But this unblinking essay about our country’s ugliest cycle was my introduction to Starr Davis, and I’m thankful for it. The wizardry of the Midwest’s secret oasis continues. I know someone who makes fake pay stubs. They can […]